OPEC+ IS FAVORABLE FOR RUSSIA

in any corruption plots. An Arkhangelsk native, he found a job as an investigator in a prosecutor’s office in 1997. In 2005, his career got a fresh impetus when he was invited to join the prosecutor general’s office. After Vladimir Putin took all investigative departments out of the prosecutor general’s office, Krasnov joined the Investigative Committee under Alexander Bastrykin. His career soared high when he became a member of the investigative group that inquired into the attempted assassination of Anatoly Chubais, the head of the company RAO UES. Among other high-profile cases he has led were those into the murders of attorney Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, the embezzlement during Vostochny spaceport’s construction, as well as the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Krasnov led some of his criminal investigations under the direct command of the Russian president. It is known that Krasnov has earned the trust of the Federal Security Service when working closely with its officers to solve a raft of criminal cases. In Lubyanka, FSB Deputy Director Alexey Sedov is widely acknowledged as an ally of Russia’s newly appointed prosecutor general.

What cannot be ruled out is that this personnel shakeup is to serve as a prelude to structural reforms in Russian law enforcement circles. This is all the more so that both the prosecutor general’s office and the Investigative Committee frequently clashed in the past. Krasnov might have been ordered to lay the groundwork to merge investigative departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and those in the Investigative Committee, with a newly founded institution being under scrutiny from the senior prosecutor.

OPEC+ IS FAVORABLE FOR RUSSIA 27 January 2020

For the first time in Russia’s alliance with OPEC, the country is changing the way it complies with its oil-output curbs. In the first quarter of 2020, Russia is authorized to exclude a type of light oil called condensate from the production data that the country should submit to the group. It is good news for Russian producers, with Gazprom and Novatek at the helm, while this should not affect revenues to the federal budget. R ussia’s oil export revenues accounted for a substantial portion of its budget revenues under the OPEC+ agreement, the government said. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted as saying in late December 2019 that global surge in oil prices provided the federal budget with an extra 6.2 trillion roubles, or roughly $99 billion, in three years. Russia failed to stick to the pact for most of 2019, with condensate growth being one of the reasons given by the government. This will no longer pose a problem, though. Condensates are hydrocarbons that are in the form of gas once below ground, but then condense into a liquid when they reach the earth’s surface. They are stabilized before being transported, which is by removing any remaining gas and very light liquids. They can then be blended with crude oil. For instance, Novatek exports stabilized condensates from its Yamal LNG project. Russia’s condensate output has been growing as the country’s largest gas producers, Gazprom and Novatek, developed new hydrocarbon fields. This comes as part of